This talk brings together the creative team behind Triptych (Eyes of One on Another), a University Musical Society (UMS) co-commission exploring the work of Robert Mapplethorpe. The production will enjoy its world premiere on Friday, March 15, and Saturday, March 16 at the Power Center Composer Bryce Dessner and librettist Korde Arrington Tuttle will discuss the range of artistic influences that informed Mapplethorpe’s work — and how the production translates the visual medium into an interdisciplinary experience. Thirty years after the death of Mapplethorpe, we still cannot turn away from what his photos reveal. Mapplethorpe’s work both unites and divides viewers, provoking a consideration of perceived opposites: black/white, male/female, gay/straight, art/porn, classical/contemporary. His pictures seduce, shock, offend, excite, intrigue, and scare us all at once. Triptych seeks to make theatrical the ways Mapplethorpe’s works compel an audience’s complicity and characterize them in the act of attention.

Co-presented with the University Musical Society (UMS).

Image: Self Portrait, 1988 © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Used by permission.